


To Break, To Mend

by liquidengineer (anathematician)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Character Study, Drabble Collection, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Force Training, Force Visions, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Leia Organa Deserves Better, Mentioned Darth Vader, POV Kylo Ren, Star Wars Lore, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-27 22:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21126263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anathematician/pseuds/liquidengineer
Summary: "I will show you what it is to be destroyed. Only when you are broken will you understand the value of what I have taught you."Light saber techniques, Sith lore, and suffering.





	To Break, To Mend

**Author's Note:**

> I've been holding onto this meandering, somewhat outdated character study-meets-missing moments collection of drabbles since April. Y i k e s.

When he jolts awake, he discovers his hand is already wrapped around the hilt of his saber. It’s been locked there for some time, judging by the way the flesh of his palm burns. Nothing more than muscle memory, at this point. An involuntary plunge into action, purely instinctual. This particular reflex is borne of fear. So much fear he thinks it might drive him insane. Maybe it already has. 

It was another nightmare, one of many that has come to claim his peace each night for the past week. He presses his head against the pillow to ground himself. He can’t shake the voice that moments before dug their claws deep in his psyche and pried him from his sleep. It gnaws at him from a place he thinks he locked away long ago. _Snoke. _The presence of his old master, even in dreams, is an ill omen. The darkness lifts as his eyes adjust, and his room comes into focus around him. There’s not much to it, and he prefers it that way. The spartan interior leaves very little for the shadows throw themselves across. There are no dark corners for someone to hide. He attempts to collect himself with a new thought: _You’re safe now. _No sooner had it taken shape than the words of his old master pushed their way back into focus. 

_I will show you what it is to be destroyed. Only when you are broken will you understand the value of what I have taught you. _

He recalls the moment those words first flowed from Snoke’s mouth. It was part of a lesson, but not the sort of lesson where the master imparts wisdom upon the student. It was a warning, and it was a promise. The first phrase would evolve into a litany of sorts: _I will show you what it is to be destroyed. _Then, over time, it took the shape of a prophecy. As a young boy, he knew of many prophecies and the lengths the universe would go to just to see them fulfilled. It made him hopeful, mystic-minded, and ripe for manipulation. Snoke understood the role fear played in the rise and fall of many inimitable Sith. Plagueis. Vader. He had chosen a fine pupil in young Ben Solo. 

Fear makes a powerful tool. It was fear that drove young Ben to think that his master searched for ways to finally snuff him out, and make good on his promise to destroy. The fear grew stronger day after day, but Snoke never dealt the fatal blow. He never got the chance. If only Ben paused to think that maybe the promised destruction would not be random or fast. Even as he knelt over the body of his old master, the subtly of his Snoke’s machinations eluded him. The truth was that he kept his promise, after all. It was a protracted death that spanned many years and countless agonizing lessons. His master wanted to see the young man erode layer by layer until nothing of the boy named Ben Solo remained. Forged of fear and resent, the apprentice known as Kylo Ren would rise from the ashes, no longer tethered to his past and devoid of the hope that would bring him closer to the light. His loss of self would be his greatest strength. 

There is a part of him that understands what has been done to him these long years, but he can’t escape the truth. How strong is the man known as Kylo Ren if the fears that consumed him as a child still goad at him in his sleep? His master taught him many things, but he never showed him how to rebuild himself. He failed to teach him how to rise again, how to embrace his fear and stand on his own to fight another day in spite of it. He owes those lessons to someone else. 

***

Snoke is long gone now. Kylo supposes that deep space has not been kind, least of all to the flaming wreckage of _The Supremacy_. A report declares that it burned for days, the chemical fire sealed inside by a failsafe shield protocol. He thinks that oversized barge makes a fitting funeral pyre. The image of his former master engulfed in flame sustains him, but it doesn’t give him the peace he hoped it would. Snoke’s arrogance infects the long, sterile corridors carved inside the First Order’s newest flagship. Snoke is ever-present in the deepest recesses of Kylo’s mind. The Snoke that lives within him is not alone; he fights for dominance among the chorus of ego memories relegated to that shadowy corner of Kylo’s consciousness where the things he’d rather not remember wait for an opportunity to reawaken. 

When he finally reaches the door to his training room, Kylo stops suddenly. One such memory breaks through the barriers and envelopes him. 

His mother leads him by the hand along a path lit by a pair of silver suns setting high above them. The air smells like salt and rain. The only sound is their shoes against the wet sand…and the waves breaking on the beach. They beat against the shore, dragging chunks of sand and stone back with it where they will join the sea for a moment before the next wave crashes against the beach and spits out its treasures from the deep. He watches in mute disappointment as only foam escapes onto the shore. The foam seeps into the sand quickly, and the sand is claimed by another wave. They cycle repeats itself, and they stand there watching the same scene unfold before them. He looks up at his mother expectantly. He doesn’t understand. He glances up at his mother, whose gentle features betray no anticipation. She appears to enjoy the monotony of it. He tries to match her patience, and hopes for the rare occasion when a gift from the depths would be returned to the shoreline. Then, the cycle breaks. He catches sight of his prize at once, and springs to rescue it from another hungry wave. It’s just a rock, black as space, and polished by a millennia of unforgiving waves and tumbled against a thousand other rocks just like it…but here it was, in his hands. His mother turns to him and smiles. He doesn’t know why he keeps the memory of that stone in his mind in the years that follow. 

When he returns to his senses and the corridor falls in around him, he finds himself slumped agains the wall and his saber is by his side. He curls his fingers into a fist, and hears the hiss of the door behind him. 

***

Thousands of voices cry out to him all at once. Some are familiar. He hears his mother call to him from somewhere he can’t reach. Some are foreign. The chorus grows louder as he forces his way through the noise. 

There are sights that the Force wishes to show him. He is willing. 

A river of fire appears behind his eyes. He follows it as it cuts its way through a molten hellscape that seems familiar, somehow. Maybe he saw it in an old holo. He breathes deeply on the ship and feels his lungs scorched by acrid, mineral-rich smoke pooling aggressively in a sky light years away. Fire collides with stone and sends a spray of bubbling rock across the face of a tower erupting from the center of this chaos. It’s a monolith drinking in the light of the slow-flowing lava, leaving the pitted terrain and the plunging cliffs in perpetual twilight. Now _that_ is something the holos never showed him. 

This place is a beacon, and it calls to him from across the stars. Kylo senses the dark energy swelling at the heart of the tower. There’s so much pain and suffering here. He places the other emotions easily: anger. Fear. Longing. Regret. He knows them well. He is a well that can never be tapped dry. The vision before him expands, sated. 

A storm churns the once-tame river bubbles and bursts. It rages in silence, waves crashing against the tower relentlessly…yet it still stands, unmarred. It’s bound to the hostile environment that threatens to destroy it and finds itself incapable. It reminds him of something, and now there is another emotion rising in Kylo: spite. 

This vision was meant for him. He reaches back, with heart and mind. 

***

He steps into the training room and it feels like stepping into the center of the sun. It’s brighter than he remembers, but then again, he can’t remember the last time he paid it a visit. Free time wasn’t something he had in abundance. Judging by the way his eyes burn as they adjust to the light, it’s fair to say that it’s been too long. The comparatively dark interior of the ship’s control rooms and his own private quarters haven’t done him any favors, either. He ponders the overhead panels and the way the light seems to flood the room as soon as he enters it. That will need to change. Soon. At one point in time, someone out there in the vast galaxy happened to think that reactive lighting was a good idea, and it’s permeated every facet of contemporary interior design since then. Nothing was safe, not even medical bays. That’s what this place used to be. Kylo committed the brief history of the entire level to memory when he first inspected the ship’s plans. The med bay was small and hard to access, but factored into the floor plan nonetheless. If this vessel every saw combat, the extra facility would prove invaluable. Seeing as how it never did, and most likely never will, its impracticality and maintenance costs meant its end. It joins the ranks of many other rooms that were similarly rendered obsolete. 

It wasn’t exactly serendipitous. Luck also happened to be something he was short on these days. A room that nobody else on the ship acknowledged, that had managed to avoid both demolition and retrofitting, with the unique ability to lock from the inside was…convenient, nothing more. But that light was blinding. He makes a note to adjust the sensitivity again. Or maybe, he thinks, he’ll just shut it off entirely. That would be better. And he’ll need to remove the plating set into the wall. It creates an unpleasant acoustic effect that could be…distracting. The more time he spends taking stock of the room, the longer his list grows. He knows what he’s doing: probing for new problems to solve. He just wishes the skill to repair things came just as easy to him. He wants to be good at fixing things, but he knows he lacks the grace of a mechanic. _A med bay_. It was poetic, in a way. He always came back to this place to heal old wounds. 

He turns his attention to the weapon in his hand. It deserves it far more. He brushes his thumb over the ignition switch and holds it there. When was the last time he actually trained with his saber? A standard month? Two months? He can’t recall. What he does recall is how frequently he ignites his saber. In that time, he’s watched it come down on steel and resin, even flesh, but he hasn’t truly worked with it in the way that it demands. The saber feels heavy in his hand, and even the ridges of the hilt feel strange, as though he isn’t meant to hold it. Maybe this hiatus did him a disservice after all, though he is loathe to admit it. He really doesn’t want to think about it any more. 

The weapons table is just the way he left it. A short-handled staff leans against the adjoining wall. He remembers a time when he could only practice with a staff. Deep cracks would form in the ones made of Japor, and when they broke, they would shatter into a dozen pieces. He could gather up all the pieces and reform the staff, it would have been simple for a boy of his skill, but he never did. He didn’t want to waste a single moment that could be spent practicing his saber technique. So, he would grab another from the rack and start his practice anew, twisting and pivoting in the growing heap of discarded staffs…and keeping an anticipatory eye on the new fractures forming in the wood.

The old Jedi holos preach the necessity of regular saber-less training. Saber work runs the risk of embedding poor form. Each adjustment of his stance or his grip to accommodate the unique design of his saber will pull his focus. In a battle, he exposes himself to his opponent and loses his combative edge with overcorrection. Form is meant to be adaptable. If the old Masters could forge new styles, he can too. Why not? No one could stop him. He finds strength in unpredictability, like the kyber crystal raging in the heart of his lightsaber. He knows the risks of using his own saber for practice. The cracked crystal in his saber isn’t equipped to handle the stress of hours of training. Too much heat over an extended period of time overburdens the vents and destabilizes the crystal even more. Despite the risks, there are benefits to training with his own saber. He can assess its imbalances, and make a note of them for future repairs. The more time he spends on the field of battle, the longer the list becomes. He doesn’t know how much more the crystal could take. 

Shadow-duel or remote? He thinks of his grandfather and a tempting question charts a path to the forefront of his mind: what would Vader have preferred? He plumbs the depths of his memory for answer. A report stored on a Rebellion-era holo suggests that Vader favored seeker droids. It’s a dubious claim to make, most likely a complete fabrication, but the mundanity of the report made it all the more compelling. Anyone could lie, but what would the Rebellion possibly gain from that? In those days, the Rebellion fought back with information—whatever they could get—and they paid dearly for it. Very few would suspect a training droid. In close quarters, an adequately rigged seeker is capable of a devastating amount of damage. Vader would not have let the details of his training rituals escape so easily. There were no shortage of accounts that testified to Vader’s diligence. He relieved himself of anyone who sought to observe him and probe for a weakness that they could exploit. Was it a lapse in security, or strategic game of misdirection? How cunning it would have been to inject a new rumor into the Rebellion’s information network. Kylo thinks of all of those war stories shared in murky final days of the Empire. Vader, obscured by hearsay, ascends in the collective conscience as a myth. Many things were written after the collapse. Many, Kylo suspects, were false. Many more, Kylo fears, were true. 

Snoke always told him that Vader was weak. Kylo tries to crush the thought, but feels the rough edge of the saber hilt against his glove instead. A canteen collapses in on itself, spilling its contents all over the floor. His thumb rests in the hollow of the ignition. Remote training was heavily oriented toward defensive stances like the Shien variant, and had become a saber training standard. The simple truth was that there was no way to practice counterattacks with a seeker, and very little to be gained from deflecting beams of light for hours if you weren’t a child. 

Blaster fire raining down on him wasn’t his idea of a fight. That’s all he really wanted: a good fight. A battle to challenge his every belief. Kylo wishes he was immutable, unflenching, like the tower carved from torment that reaches out to him when he closes his eyes. It’s no dream he’s conjured for himself out of a poetic sense of strife. It’s a vision of his own destiny, stretched out before him. The switch glides forward of its own volition, and vibrant energy surges from the saber — a river of fire cutting through the starkness of the training room. 

He aches for a duel. 


End file.
